Ever heard of “shift work disorder?” It’s a new disease being played up by the pharmaceutical industry to sell drugs so dangerous that even the home page of the drug website admits the drug may kill you.

One such drug is called “Nuvigil,” sold by Cephalon, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. The warning text on the Nuvigil website[2] says:

NUVIGIL (armodafinil) Tablets [C-IV] may cause serious side effects including a serious rash or a serious allergic reaction that may affect parts of your body such as your liver or blood cells, and may result in hospitalization and be life-threatening. If you develop a skin rash, hives, sores in your mouth, blisters, swelling, peeling, or yellowing of the skin or eyes, trouble swallowing or breathing, dark urine, or fever, stop taking NUVIGIL and call your doctor right away or get emergency help.

According to the Nuvigil website, the drug is, “a prescription medicine used to improve wakefulness in adults who experience excessive sleepiness due… shift work disorder (SWD)”

Yet another fictitious disease

SWD, of course, is a made-up “disease” now being propagandized for the sole purpose of selling drugs like Nuvigil. The pushing of fictitious disorders is generally known as “disease mongering” across the industry. The premise of so-called Shift Work Disorder[3] is that the tiredness you feel when you stay up all night working a night shift is actually some sort of disease requiring chemical intervention.

You’re not simply tired because you’re out of sync with the sun, the fictional narrative says: you’re tired because you have a disorder! And unless you pop these pills — which might kill you — you’ll never be normal again!

This is the incessant lie of all drug[4] advertisements: these pills will make you normal and healthy, they claim. Yet people who take their pills aren’t normal and healthy; they’re chronically diseased and suffering kidney failure, liver failure, skin disorders, sleep disorders and often dying from FDA-approved medications.

An incredible 783,000 Americans die each year from conventional medicine[5]. Roughly 100,000 of those are killed by FDA-approved prescription medications. Yet the industry’s answer is to keep inventing more and more medications to add to the toxic burden patients are already experiencing from the half-dozen meds they’re already popping on a daily basis.

That’s the business model of Big Pharma, of course: invent a fake disease[6], promote the disease to push a new pill, then get as many people to take those pills as possible while government Medicaid and Medicare programs write the checks.

The patient, in essence, is just a proxy for profit. The patient’s body is essentially a chemical dumping ground so that drug companies can collect profits while claiming to have offered some sort of “treatment” that never actually treats anything other than symptoms.

“NUVIGIL may help the sleepiness caused by these conditions, but it may not stop all of your sleepiness and does not take the place of sleep,” says the Nuvigil[7] website. In other words, you’d probably have similar results by slamming a couple of Monster energy drinks (not that I’m recommending energy drinks, of course).

Highly addictive controlled substance

But wait, there’s more: “NUVIGIL is a federally controlled substance (C-IV), so use NUVIGIL only as directed and keep in a safe place to prevent misuse and abuse. It is against the law to sell[8] or give NUVIGIL to another person.”

Ah, and now we get to the real heart of the matter. Nuvigil is a highly addictive controlled substance.

“NUVIGIL is a federally controlled substance [C-IV] because it has the potential to be abused or lead to dependence,” says the Nuvigil website[9]. “Selling or giving away NUVIGIL may harm others and is against the law.”

What they mean, of course, is that you selling Nuvigil to someone else is against the law, but it’s not against the law for the drug industry to conspire with your doctor to sell you the drug. Keep this in mind when you hear about front groups like the Partnership For A Drug-Free America. Nearly all these front groups are funded by Big Pharma, and their goal is to get drugs off the streets so that people have to buy those very same drugs via prescription. It’s a turf war, and Big Pharma wants to be your dealer.

By the way, the company that makes Nuvigil is running clinical trials now in an effort to get the pill approved for treating depression and “bi-polar disorder,” yet another fictitious disease invented by the psychiatric industry to sell more high-profit pharmaceuticals that harm people. If they get their way, you’ll soon be able to buy highly addictive, class IV controlled substances to treat your “bi-polarness.”

One of the most common side effects of Nuvigil is insomnia

“In placebo-controlled studies, the most commonly observed side effects were headache, nausea, dizziness, and insomnia,” says Wikipedia, a website I don’t always trust but nevertheless tends to have useful information about drug side effects.

So wait, let me get this straight: The pill people are supposed to take when they feel too sleepy and can’t stay awake somehow causes insomnia? Say it isn’t so…

Taking the pill, then, can cause you to be unable to attain normal, healthy sleep. This causes your next night shift to be worse than the previous one, making you feel so tired you start popping extra Nuvigil. Then the hallucinations from sleep deprivation start to kick in, probably, and you find yourself playing out the opening sequence of “Fight Club” starring Ed Norton.

Keep in mind that the people who are likely to be targeted for this drug are paramedics, EMTs, doctors, nurses and other night-shift workers who need to have their heads on straight. If I’m in a late-night car accident and end up in the emergency room, I don’t want some pill-popping medical addict trying to patch me up.

A safer alternative: phototherapy

So what can late-night workers do to stay alert on their night shifts? The answer is found in nature: phototherapy (light therapy).

Your endocrine system has its own light sensors that control the levels of hormones like melatonin. When your body senses light, it tells you to wake up and be alert. When it senses an absence of light, it tells your body to produce hormones that wind you down and help you go to sleep.

The simple solution for late-night work shifts is therefore twofold:

1) Avoid all light sources when sleeping (wear a blindfold or have window shades that can block out nearly 100% of outside light).

2) Supplement your light before or during night shifts. This may mean purchasing and using a high-intensity phototherapy[10] device. Sunlight is quite intense, after all. Search for “light therapy device” or “Seasonal Affective Disorder” lamp to locate such products.

In addition, having a healthy endocrine system will further support your ability to work late-night shifts without compromising your overall health. This means avoiding all hormone mimickers such as BPA and drastically reducing your exposure to heavy metals.

In the end, however, there is no replacement for natural sunlight. Your body is engineered to work in harmony with Mother Nature, and that means waking and sleeping in rhythm with the orbit and rotation of planet Earth. Working late-night shifts will inevitably accelerate your aging, suppress your immune system, worsen your moods and disrupt your hormones. No drug will reverse this. Ultimately, the best solution is to work night shifts only temporarily and return to normal waking schedules as quickly as you can.